


What Now?

by Person



Category: Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck locked in a small room beneath the sea for weeks, Tetra has little to do but think (and hope that Link returns before she dies of starvation).</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Now?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spoilers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoilers/gifts).



Tetra's first thought, once the stairs leading out of the cathedral were sealed off and enough time had passed that Link must have returned to the surface, was 'Well, what now?'

When Link had lead her into the castle he'd told her a little about the state it had been in when he'd found it, and when part of the king's big plan turned out to involve sealing her up in it she'd kind of assumed time would freeze again once they were gone. After all, it wasn't like they'd just stick her in a basement with no food for who knew how long if they didn't have something up their sleeves to keep her from starving, she'd assumed.

But it looked like a couple centuries as a boat was enough to make a man forget the needs of the flesh. She wasn't going to blame Link for not thinking of it, the kid had probably thought the same way she did, but the old tub had apparently been waiting _ages_ for her to come along. She'd have thought that in all that time he'd have set his thoughts on making sure his princess stayed alive once he finally found her, and kept in mind that a girl could die from more than just a mad man chasing after her.

If he'd even let her keep the clothes on her back instead of using whatever magical nonsense he'd pulled out to make her as princessey as he wanted her to be she'd have been in _slightly_ better shape. She always kept a few pieces of hardtack stuffed in her pouch just in case, enough to keep off complete starvation for a few days if she nibbled at it slowly, and a bottle of water to sip away at. There wasn't a pirate alive who didn't keep a little grub stuffed on their person, holding it ready if the ship ever went down but praying they wouldn't need it. But even that little emergency supply had vanished off her with the rest of her stuff.

At least there was water. She only hoped that fancy castle indoor pools were clean enough to drink without boiling, because fire was another thing she'd have to do without.

And just what was she meant to do for a bed?

* * *

A day and a half in she was starting to go stir crazy just from how _still_ everything was.

She wasn't made to stay on solid land for longer than a night's carousing or an afternoon selling booty and buying up supplies. She was a pirate, born and raised; the sea had filled her veins with its salt and worked its waves into her feet. The stone of the castle beneath her was too solid, too stern, there was no give to it, no playful rolling beneath her to match her treads to.

And the silence, it was like _nothing_ she'd ever heard. It was never quiet on the Great Sea. There were screeching gulls, seahats whirring across the water, and the water itself... oh, she had _never_ been to a place so far from the shore that she couldn't hear the rolling sea if she just stretched her ears for it. The whole world seemed dead without the sea roaring for her in the distance. More than once she went for a drink of water and got caught up in splashing her hands against the surface, just for the faintest echo of the sound that should have filled the world.

It was even enough to make her faintly grateful, in an odd way, for the increasingly loud rumbling in her stomach. At least it was a noise to break the stillness.

Couldn't that old boat have thought of another place to hide her away? Somewhere that the world still fit together the way it was meant to?

* * *

It took her awhile to think of her crew, and then after the shot of guilt that ran through her when she did she couldn't think of anything else for a good long time.

Had Link thought to find them for her, to let them know she was safe? The last they'd known she'd been going back to help him get out of that fortress, and then she must just have seemed to have vanished.

They'd go back for her if Link didn't meet up with them quickly, she knew. Every man among them was loyal to his teeth, those who weren't had left when her mother died and good riddance to them all. It didn't matter that Niko would be terrified, for all that he'd try to cover it with bravado, or that Mako was only really good with his knife which was hardly the best weapon against spears and giants swords, every one of them would tramp through the fortress looking for her.

And if they ran into that man at the top, the one whose hand she could still feel clamped tight around her neck, they wouldn't have a chance. They were the best pirate crew on the face of the sea, she would brag about the skills of any one of them to anyone who dared to doubt their strength, but she knew her men. She knew their abilities. And that man had been on a level above any and all of them.

For an evening the hunger pangs that filled her seemed more distant. She was too focused on clutching her gossip stone in her hand, muttering into it over and over, "You've gotta let them know I'm here Link, you hear me? You let that tub know, if I get out of here and find anything's happened to my men I'll pillage his pretty little kingdom _myself_ , show him what happens when you get on the bad side of a pirate. Do you hear me Link? Can you find them?"

But the stone stayed dark and silent in her hand, whatever magic shielded the castle from the outside world not even letting a simple message escape.

* * *

Her coordination was starting to go as the hunger grew. More and more often she found herself tripping over her stupid frilly dress just from walking across the level ground.

She found herself wishing for a needle and thread, imagining slitting the thing up the center then sewing the ends together like some weird for of pants, then she clenched her teeth tightly.

She was _not_ some prissy girl princess, whatever Link's boat had claimed. She was a _pirate_ , she didn't sit around sewing. If she needed something sewn together she'd order Nudge to do it. He'd do a better job of it anyway, she'd never sewn a straight line in her life.

Why'd he need to stick her in a dress anyway? Did he somehow think that magically glowing symbols appearing on her hand wouldn't be enough to convince her that something was going on? She still wasn't sure she really believed him about being some lost princess, but dressing her up fancy didn't make the story any more convincing. If anything it made her look back at her poor naive younger self of just a week or two before, who had sometimes looked at pretty dresses and thought it would be fun to dress up one day and go somewhere fancy, and shake her head at how foolish she'd been.

Why had she ever thought wearing something she wouldn't even be able to _fight_ in properly would be fun? Not that she was in any state to fight anything anyway, the way she was teetering on her legs. Not that that damn old boat even planned to let her fight for herself if it had its way, something she hadn't thought to question when she was still dazed from the one-two punch of getting half her life choked out of her then finding out she was some kind of magic princess but which was annoying her more and more as she had time to think about it.

Fancy dresses were more trouble than they were worth. The only thing that the one she was wearing would be any good for was making sure her corpse would already be dressed for her funeral, if Link didn't get back soon.

* * *

What did that stupid boat, that king of an empty land, even think it would matter if she _was_ his missing princess? What was the Zelda-girl she was supposed to be even supposed to do?

Say that Link beat the baddy and the kingdom came back, Tetra doubted very much that the people of the islands would happily accept some random girl sitting in a castle claiming she was now their ruler because back in a time of legends her ancestors had been kings. They'd more likely to drag her out of the castle by her hair, blaming the wanna-be royal for somehow stealing away the sea.

And that was something that Tetra thought the king just didn't understand; she'd never once heard of anyone wanting the Great Sea gone. It was everyone's home, the only shape of the land they'd ever known. They might still pass on the legends about how once upon a time the world had had a different form, but they just did it as a fairy story, not as a wish that things could go back that to being that way. People wouldn't even know how to live in a world with that much land between places; the fishermen would all be out of jobs, the traders would need to build carts and map out a whole new terrain just to get goods from place to place, there would be rotting fish and octos and seaweed and other detritus _everywhere_ that got stuck on land when the sea poured away... Out of everyone who made a living traveling the islands, only the postmen might be able to keep their lives about the same, and even they'd have to learn the new shape of the area.

She would tell him when her came back, she decided. She would help out in whatever way they needed to defeat that man, but she wasn't going to be a princess for the Great Sea. If all the land came back and wrecked everyone's lives she wasn't going to sit tight in his big shiny castle and be his mouthpiece telling everyone that the world was meant to be that way.

The sea was in her. She'd take her men and go chasing after it as fast as she could. And if the rest of the people _wanted_ her to rule over them for some reason, well, once they caught up she could always build a whole fleet.

She thought Pirate Queen Tetra had a much better ring to it than Princess Zelda anyway.

* * *

Her own leg was starting to look like a tasty piece of meat.

She was a pirate. Peg legs would be an appropriate accessory anyway.

It was like a joke. They locked her up claiming it was for her own good, that even though she'd been fighting since long before Link even thought about picking up a sword somehow it would be too dangerous for her to help out, and their protection was going to kill her.

She hadn't done much for the last couple days but lay by the side of the pool, close enough to dip her hand in when she needed water, which was about as much energy as she felt she could muster. Now, to draw her attention away from the meat close at hand, she rolled heavily sideways, turninng her eyes towards the bright windows surrounding her.

She'd looked at them a lot during her first several days there, their brilliant colors the only thing worth looking to. She didn't know who the people in any of them were meant to be. For a little while she'd tried making up stories about them, but had quickly given up on it. She'd never had Senza's gift for storytelling, and it had just seemed kinda disrespectful besides. Once upon a time those people had been so important that they'd been worthy of having those beautiful windows made of them. They didn't deserve to be forgotten, and have a girl come along forever later and make up fake names and tales for them.

But now, her blurring eyes making the reds of one of them flow together like fire, she wondered if they were all so unknown. Those flaming reds, that ruthless smile... "Din," she croaked, her voice hoarse. "That has to be you, doesn't it?" The smile seemed to go wider, more mocking, as she spoke, and she glowered at it. "You Goddesses, you're the ones who made this place, you're the ones in charge of this _thing_ ," she said and clenched the hand the triforce had appeared on, only barely noticing that it closed around some fallen bit of rock at it curled, "and you couldn't make a little effort to keep a girl fed? What sort of useless goddesses _are_ you."

Not even thinking she raised her arm up, pulled it back, and threw whatever she'd grabbed towards the window. She would have thought that her arm was too weak for the throw to even reach. If it did she would have sworn it couldn't have enough force behind it to make the tiniest crack.

Instead the entire window shattered, and as the shards fell the view behind it was revealed.

It was filled by an apple tree heavy with fruit, so close that its branches must have pressed right against the glass. Neatly as anything one of the falling shards must have sliced through a stem, because an apple was falling as she watched, dropping inside and rolling across the floor right up to her face. Without even thinking her hands flew upwards, pressing it to her mouth and biting so deeply that she hit the core.

Later she would think to apologize to the goddess for her blasphemies, but at that moment she had only one thought.

She would live.

**Author's Note:**

> Tetra uses boat terms for King Hyrule even though she's only actually spoken to him as a person because he does say that he was Link's ship in front of her and, well, she's not happy with him so I figured she wouldn't want to be as respectful as giving him his real title (or even calling him a ship instead of a boat).
> 
> And I know that window is actually Nabooru, but if you're someone who lives in a time when the sages have been forgotten about she certainly looks like she could be Din!


End file.
